And so the smartphonification of the general purpose computer continues. This time around, though, it might actually be for the better. Microsoft has detailed two new features in Windows 8: refreshing and resetting your computer. Reinstalls will be a thing of the past.

"I know my experience isn't universal, but my usage pattern should be the type that causes much fragmentation, yet it doesn't."

It depends of how full the drive is. Consider a disk at 50% capacity, there are probably still plenty of unfragmented clusters available to place new files in, and so those files won't become fragmented, even if files are deleted.

It's not until the disk approaches capacity that the file system has to start making compromises about placing bits of files at less ideal locations and fragmentation begins to take place.